Your Character's Name: V.R. V.R.’s log. We arrived in Seattle; our objective was a laptop somewhere at the top of the hill. My team is comprised out of junior arcadists like myself. The laptop could only provide a few usable parts for the computers here in Emerald Mall, why are six of us being sent out? Initial reactions to the snakes. They are manipulators for the most part, each after everyone’s throat. I wrestle control as soon as possible. It might be easier on the defensive. One of them seems trustworthy, big guy, more of a fighter stat build. I decide to call him Heavy. The rest are Weaponless, Gun, and Snivel. We go a city block, the V.R. room is only twenty feet by twenty so when move around the A.I. has to bend the light in the room and make you walk in circles. I can almost hear the cooling fans kick up a gear, fantastic. The machine is gonna fry in the middle of our qualifying game. Emerald Mall was held together by chewing gum and prayer. They needed more scavengers so kids like us were being tossed out of the mall before we get the standard four years of training. We find a building with a sign that said Trader Jose’s. The noobs go zerg on the place. The fever gets to me too, and why not. This was important. This was loot. We all scrounged through the piles of filth as the Heavy stands guard, good initiative I think. Creative, but not too creative. Another one, Snivel, rigs up a contraption with fishing line and a cat statue, a little elaborate, but hey, he’s trying new things. In the end we find a silver spoon and knife. Cutlery; dull, useless silverware. I steel myself, this is all a test. Gun (One of us started with a gun, so I call him that) loudly asks us if he has to tell us he has a gun. We all turn to each other slowly. Gun covers his mouth. Great. Helpdesk support and query answering are clearly offline. Gun should have been able to Whisper to the A.I. without any of us being the wiser. Maybe Emerald Mall is on its last legs. I suppose it stands to reason. I had been speaking out loud, or “shouting” so that everyone could hear me and the paranoid backstabbers would think they were being cut out. Now it looks like every thought these fools come up with are going to be exclaimed for me to not be able to tune out, wonderful. Whispers between snivel and gun, mutiny probably. Snivel uses a notebook to write down something. As he has been shouting that he stays in the back and does nothing every five minutes or so I assume he is up to something. I still am more afraid of what Gun can do, with whatever weapons he may or may not possess. See two guards behind a chain-link fence, they have riot gear and by the way they hold their weapons so bored I can tell they have experience. What are they doing out here? There is nothing left to guard in this void except forks and knives. Who is paying these idiots to stand around a fence in the middle of nowhere? How do these people eat? And the most important question would have to be ‘Where did they get those nice Guns?’ We start chittering like squirrels on the next course of action. I undervalued Whisper, I see that now, so why am I still being punished? After a good half hour the crackly p.a. announces that the guards are indeed the infamous MPD but they will not shoot on sight. What? Why the hell not? If I had a gun and clear access to food in the wasteland that is America why would I not shoot anything that moves? Horsemen, Bandits of the Hood, random ninjas, it would just be safer to shoot first. Most of us walk up in plain sight as snivel hides in bushes. Walk up with weapons stowed, try to make small talk, they want none of it. I curse myself for pouring points into Charisma. With Intellect you simply knew how to practice medicine or know law or whatever. With charisma you could persuade others but it has to make sense, effectively it has to already be persuasive. Heavy went the smartest route I think, points in not-dying seem pretty stellar right about now. I go out on a limb and ask them to join us. One says fuck off and the other listens. He agrees to help for half the payoff, maybe. His buddy tells him no. The guy says maybe and that he gets off at sundown. Gun wants to talk, is shot down fairly quickly. I want to have another soldier, one who knows what he’s doing. One who will justifiably want to stab me in the back the first chance he gets. What possible reason could either of them want to stay, guarding a fence in a ghost town? But as much as I want to I can’t wait that long. The fans are whirring audibly now. The machine tends to overheat and at this rate we only have five or ten minutes left. So we press on. Find bunker with a toppled radio tower, creakily swaying with strong gusts. Weaponless walks on opposite side of street, he sees a fence with barbed wire around the building, guards outside. Snivel sneaks around. This has to be it. This is how games work. The end boss, the final level, finally we found it. The laptop has to be in there. These are heavily armed goons, of course they would have anything of value in the area that wasn’t nailed down. Hell, they probably have all the nails in there too. Paydirt, Jackpot, Yahtzee. But the guards tell us to go fornicate. I do not understand these NPC’s. They just stand around. They don’t want our stuff, or our food, even though they could easily take it. They are not interested in us in any way, how many other human being cross through here on a regular basis? Snivel makes hiss sound, complains when we walk back to bush, drawing attention to his presence, making his sneaking for naught. Boo-hoo, I think. We return to Jose’s to make a plan. Instead we see a deer. It is a magnificent animal, brown and white fur. Large brown eyes, spindly legs, and cone-shaped ears. I have never seen a real one. I decide to kill it. I don’t think this version of the game has XP, but the deer might have items? If only deer meat. Meanwhile Snivel stands there describing tactics and stratagems in a stage whisper. The deer gets away, and I am happy for the first time today, even if it isn’t real. I hope it enjoys its freedom in some randomized forest on the edges of reality as long as it can before the machine overheats and blows a fuse or is shut down. So it’s up to this then. We have the grail within sight but it could not be farther from our grasp. I decide to give my best, well lets be honest, only good item to Snivel. I give snivel the grappling gun. He has the best dexterity, he could scale the radio tower into the bunker and swipe the laptop. We then plan to make a diversion for Snivel, a slapstick style fight where we draw the MPD’s attention and buy Snivel some time. The plan swings into action as the shadow of the man dead-set on murdering me leaves with my only usable item. Get told we will get shot if we don’t leave in 10 seconds by the bunker’s guards. Huh. I try to burn Jose’s to the ground and fail. This session is a bust, there is no way we are getting that bloody computer. Is the test unbeatable? Were we supposed to learn something about ourselves? No that was just stupid. Well at least I sent Snivel to his assured destruction, and that deer got away. Silver linings. I don’t hate these players, I hate the game.
V.R.’s log.
We arrived in Seattle; our objective was a laptop somewhere at the top of the hill. My team is comprised out of junior arcadists like myself. The laptop could only provide a few usable parts for the computers here in Emerald Mall, why are six of us being sent out?
Initial reactions to the snakes. They are manipulators for the most part, each after everyone’s throat. I wrestle control as soon as possible. It might be easier on the defensive. One of them seems trustworthy, big guy, more of a fighter stat build. I decide to call him Heavy. The rest are Weaponless, Gun, and Snivel.
We go a city block, the V.R. room is only twenty feet by twenty so when move around the A.I. has to bend the light in the room and make you walk in circles. I can almost hear the cooling fans kick up a gear, fantastic. The machine is gonna fry in the middle of our qualifying game. Emerald Mall was held together by chewing gum and prayer. They needed more scavengers so kids like us were being tossed out of the mall before we get the standard four years of training.
We find a building with a sign that said Trader Jose’s. The noobs go zerg on the place. The fever gets to me too, and why not. This was important. This was loot. We all scrounged through the piles of filth as the Heavy stands guard, good initiative I think. Creative, but not too creative. Another one, Snivel, rigs up a contraption with fishing line and a cat statue, a little elaborate, but hey, he’s trying new things. In the end we find a silver spoon and knife. Cutlery; dull, useless silverware. I steel myself, this is all a test.
Gun (One of us started with a gun, so I call him that) loudly asks us if he has to tell us he has a gun. We all turn to each other slowly. Gun covers his mouth. Great. Helpdesk support and query answering are clearly offline. Gun should have been able to Whisper to the A.I. without any of us being the wiser. Maybe Emerald Mall is on its last legs. I suppose it stands to reason. I had been speaking out loud, or “shouting” so that everyone could hear me and the paranoid backstabbers would think they were being cut out. Now it looks like every thought these fools come up with are going to be exclaimed for me to not be able to tune out, wonderful.
Whispers between snivel and gun, mutiny probably. Snivel uses a notebook to write down something. As he has been shouting that he stays in the back and does nothing every five minutes or so I assume he is up to something. I still am more afraid of what Gun can do, with whatever weapons he may or may not possess.
See two guards behind a chain-link fence, they have riot gear and by the way they hold their weapons so bored I can tell they have experience. What are they doing out here? There is nothing left to guard in this void except forks and knives. Who is paying these idiots to stand around a fence in the middle of nowhere? How do these people eat? And the most important question would have to be ‘Where did they get those nice Guns?’
We start chittering like squirrels on the next course of action. I undervalued Whisper, I see that now, so why am I still being punished? After a good half hour the crackly p.a. announces that the guards are indeed the infamous MPD but they will not shoot on sight.
What? Why the hell not? If I had a gun and clear access to food in the wasteland that is America why would I not shoot anything that moves? Horsemen, Bandits of the Hood, random ninjas, it would just be safer to shoot first.
Most of us walk up in plain sight as snivel hides in bushes.
Walk up with weapons stowed, try to make small talk, they want none of it. I curse myself for pouring points into Charisma. With Intellect you simply knew how to practice medicine or know law or whatever. With charisma you could persuade others but it has to make sense, effectively it has to already be persuasive. Heavy went the smartest route I think, points in not-dying seem pretty stellar right about now.
I go out on a limb and ask them to join us. One says fuck off and the other listens. He agrees to help for half the payoff, maybe. His buddy tells him no. The guy says maybe and that he gets off at sundown. Gun wants to talk, is shot down fairly quickly.
I want to have another soldier, one who knows what he’s doing. One who will justifiably want to stab me in the back the first chance he gets. What possible reason could either of them want to stay, guarding a fence in a ghost town? But as much as I want to I can’t wait that long. The fans are whirring audibly now. The machine tends to overheat and at this rate we only have five or ten minutes left. So we press on.
Find bunker with a toppled radio tower, creakily swaying with strong gusts. Weaponless walks on opposite side of street, he sees a fence with barbed wire around the building, guards outside. Snivel sneaks around. This has to be it. This is how games work. The end boss, the final level, finally we found it. The laptop has to be in there. These are heavily armed goons, of course they would have anything of value in the area that wasn’t nailed down. Hell, they probably have all the nails in there too. Paydirt, Jackpot, Yahtzee.
But the guards tell us to go fornicate. I do not understand these NPC’s. They just stand around. They don’t want our stuff, or our food, even though they could easily take it. They are not interested in us in any way, how many other human being cross through here on a regular basis? Snivel makes hiss sound, complains when we walk back to bush, drawing attention to his presence, making his sneaking for naught. Boo-hoo, I think.
We return to Jose’s to make a plan. Instead we see a deer. It is a magnificent animal, brown and white fur. Large brown eyes, spindly legs, and cone-shaped ears. I have never seen a real one. I decide to kill it. I don’t think this version of the game has XP, but the deer might have items? If only deer meat. Meanwhile Snivel stands there describing tactics and stratagems in a stage whisper. The deer gets away, and I am happy for the first time today, even if it isn’t real. I hope it enjoys its freedom in some randomized forest on the edges of reality as long as it can before the machine overheats and blows a fuse or is shut down.
So it’s up to this then. We have the grail within sight but it could not be farther from our grasp. I decide to give my best, well lets be honest, only good item to Snivel. I give snivel the grappling gun. He has the best dexterity, he could scale the radio tower into the bunker and swipe the laptop.
We then plan to make a diversion for Snivel, a slapstick style fight where we draw the MPD’s attention and buy Snivel some time. The plan swings into action as the shadow of the man dead-set on murdering me leaves with my only usable item.
Get told we will get shot if we don’t leave in 10 seconds by the bunker’s guards.
Huh.
I try to burn Jose’s to the ground and fail.
This session is a bust, there is no way we are getting that bloody computer. Is the test unbeatable? Were we supposed to learn something about ourselves? No that was just stupid. Well at least I sent Snivel to his assured destruction, and that deer got away. Silver linings.
I don’t hate these players, I hate the game.